Cold Magic (Spiritwalker 1)

“To be what you are is the kernel at the core of every person,” he agreed. He strode at a pace that would tire me in time, but I was determined to show no weakness. In a way, Kayleigh had done me a favor by giving me that sleep in the warmth of her mother’s house.

“What illness eats at your mother?” I asked.

“She is not my mother,” said Duvai. “My mother was not willing to play second kora when her husband took another, younger bride, so she returned to her own village, taking her bride price with her.”

“But not her son.”

“The son remains with his father. My sisters grew up with her, under the hand of a Trinobantic lord instead of a mage House.”

“Who is the better master, prince or magister?”

“Why should I prefer one master over another? Do you?”

His bluntness surprised me. “I do not, I admit.” I hesitated, but I could never keep a prudent tongue. “What happened to Andevai and Kayleigh’s mother?”

“The city medicine keeps her alive. Suffering is what comes from love.”

“That’s a hard way to look at it. How did the House come to take Andevai?”

“Cold magic knows its own. Their seekers found him when his power bloomed the year he turned sixteen, and they took him away. That is what masters do—they take what they want.”

“Yet you still live in the village.”

“Do you believe it so easy to walk away? Maybe that is what they teach you in the city. But I wonder if people in the city are any freer than we are here. As long as we pay our third in crops and labor, we are left mostly alone. Others have far less than we do.”

“The village will be punished when the mansa knows you helped me escape.”

He laughed.

“How is that funny?” I demanded.

On the hard skin of snow, each footfall’s snap reverberated through the trees. There was no wind at all, and the deathly stillness was beginning to make me uneasy.

“Do you worry for us? Even if you do, you did not walk up to my brother and give yourself into his hands. So your concern for my village is kind to my ears, but I am not sure how much it really means.”

“I don’t intend to die for the mansa’s benefit. I’m just sorry I stumbled onto your village and brought you into this, ah, difficulty.”

“Yet you would not have lived out the night had we not given you guest shelter.”

the homespun cloak concealing my form, I passed through the inner gate beside Duvai without incident. The stripling was waiting in the shadow of a long thatched shelter where slabs of frozen meat hung from the rafters. He handed a pack and gear to Duvai and a smaller pack to me.

“I can come—” he began brightly.

“An obedient son brings wood to his mother’s hearth,” remarked Duvai. The lad took the hint and with a sigh of resignation watched us go.

Duvai knew the land and the season. The barest hint of gray lightened the snowy landscape as we crossed the outer gate. If there were wolves in the shadows, they faded as day crept out from the thicket of night. Snow crunched under our feet.

“Anyone can follow our trail,” I said, glancing behind at the footprints leading away.

He said nothing, just kept walking southeast in a direction that led us away from both the House and the toll road. He set a strong pace, but I had long legs and the strength to keep up. Maybe he was testing me, for by the time we reached the edge of the land cleared and husbanded by the village, I was warm despite the cold. We halted beneath the snow-kissed branches of spruce. He knelt, scooped up a palmful of crisp snow, and blew it back the way we had come, a scatter of misted breath and a sparkle. A wind skirled over the ground, whipping the grass and rustling in the skeletal arms of the orchard. It rolled back over our footprints and, like the sweep of a brush, erased them.

“Are you a cold mage, too?” I demanded, stunned by this display.

He rose. “I am no cold mage. A good hunter must understand what lies around him. That is all. Best we go quickly and make distance.”

We walked, Duvai in the lead and me three steps behind.

“Why do you have two hats?” I asked his back. “I mean, what did you mean by that?”